-
Asked by anon-188264 to Warren, Shanti, Pizza Ka Yee, Paul, Nadine, Alex on 9 Nov 2018.
Question: Is autism a type of personality disorder?
- Keywords:
-
Nadine Mirza answered on 9 Nov 2018:
Interesting question- Autism would be classified as a developmental disorder (because it starts in childhood and develops from there) or a learning disability. It wouldnt be a personality disorder because its not so much the personality that’s being effected by it. Autism effects communication and senses and how people perceive the world and relate to other people. you can read more about it here if you’d like!: https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is.aspx
-
Alex Reid answered on 9 Nov 2018: last edited 10 Nov 2018 5:24 pm
Hi this is not my area but we typically determine personality disorders using very specific criterion which doctors and psychiatrists will use to diagnose people. The exact guidelines medical professionals use to do this can be found in the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders. This manual, which provides evidence-based criterion, treats autism and personality disorders as distinct things. Autism, as Nadine says, is a developmental disorder and has a different prognosis and treatment than the range of personality disorders found in the DSM. However, this does not mean that there isn’t sometimes overlap in the way some personality disorders and autism present (look), for example they both might include individuals who have trouble responding to emotions and have issues with interpersonal functioning. In fact because of this people are sometimes wrongly misdiagnosed one way or the other. It is also worth bearing in mind it is possible to have both! When you have two (or more) conditions as defined by the DSM it is said to be ‘comorbid’.
-
Paul Matusz answered on 11 Nov 2018:
Both Nadine and Alex provide great answers here. I’d perhaps add that there is a rapidly changing way of looking at people with autism, whether very progressed (they may not be entirely independent in every day like) and that accompanied by high level of traditionally measured intelligence and cogntive functionining (we also call it “Asperger’s syndrome”). Till recently, we thought about people from these groups as “learning disabled” – but these days we are starting to recognise that in some areas they might have unique skills, not present in “neurotypical” people – like in creativity, problem solving or attention to detail. Have a look at a blogpost on the topic, and if you are further interested there is an absolutely fascinating book on the topic of “neurodiversity” titled Neurotribes:
Comments